In the chemical processing and other industries, many bulk particulate materials often are transported in bags, drums and other portable containers which often are required to be unloaded and transferred into conveying systems, reactor vessels or storage vessels. Such unloading and transferring commonly is performed manually or with the aid of various lifting and dumping devices. In either instance, physical manual effort is required which has its limitations and often spillage of material occurs. In some plant facilities where a vacuum pump may be available and convenient, various vacuum devices may be used for unloading such materials and recovering any spillage of the materials. An example of one of such devices is illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,769,572.
Many plant facilities are neither equipped nor have conveniently available vacuum pumps required for such prior art vacuuming devices. Such facilities, however, usually are equipped with a source of compressed air which may be utilized to provide a motive force in a device for unloading bulk particulate materials and recovering spillage occurring in the handling of such material. It thus is the principal object of the present invention to provide a manually operated device in the form of an eductor wand which is adapted to utilize a conventional, generally available source of compressed air found in plant facilities as a motive force for unloading freely flowing bulk particulate materials from various types of containers and otherwise recover such materials.